Publications

February 1998 (Revised September 1998)
Case

Insteel Wire Products: ABM at Andrews

By: V.G. Narayanan and Ratna G. Sarkar

Insteel implements an activity-based costing (ABC) system in 1996. It finds pallet nails to be its most profitable product and decides to expand the number of cells making pallet nails from two to four. A repeat of the ABC study in 1997 shows pallet nails have become... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Expansion; Resource Allocation; Activity Based Costing and Management

October 2012
Case

Hill Country Snack Foods Co.

By: W. Carl Kester and Craig Stephenson

Hill Country Snack Foods, located in Austin, Texas, manufactures, markets, and distributes snack foods and frozen treats. The CEO is passionate about maximizing shareholder value and believes in keeping tight control over costs and operating the business as efficiently... View Details

Keywords: United States; Financial Strategy; Debt Management; Retail Trade; Risk Management; Food; Capital Structure; Corporate Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Texas

"A spectacular achievement" - Library Journal

From the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, the failings of corporate titans are regular fixtures in the news. But what drives wealthy and... View Details

February 1998 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Airborne Express

By: Jan W. Rivkin

In the wake of a highly successful quarter, senior managers of Airborne Express, the third largest player in the express mail industry, review the firm's competitive position. Airborne has survived, and recently prospered, in an industry with significant economies of... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Business Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Global Strategy; Rank and Position; Service Industry

29 May 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is the “Service Sector Effect” on Productivity?

like the Vanguard Group, Southwest Airlines, and Wal-Mart (in the U.S.) have had a profound impact on the way we live and work. They share several things in common: (1) a penchant for driving down View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Service

January–February 2017
Article

The Truth about Blockchain

By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

Contracts, transactions, and records of them provide critical structure in our economic system, but they haven’t kept up with the world’s digital transformation. They’re like rush-hour gridlock trapping a Formula 1 race car. Blockchain promises to solve this problem.... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Information Management; Information Technology Industry

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

January 2006
Tutorial

Cost-Volume Profit Models

By: David F. Hawkins, V.G. Narayanan, Jacob Cohen and Michele Jurgens

Covers fixed, variable, and semivariable costs and their role in building and interpreting cost-volume-profit models. Introduces the cost-volume and contribution-volume-profit models and identifies some of their uses and limitations. Teaches how to use the... View Details

Keywords: Volume; Cost; Profit; Mathematical Methods

March 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Supplement

Arck Systems (C)

By: Ian Larkin

The Arck Systems series of cases describes the dilemmas faced by a senior sales manager in determining a sales compensation plan at an enterprise software company. The existing compensation plan is aggressive and highly rewards "star" performers. The cases track a... View Details

Keywords: Change; Framework; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Management; Organizational Design; Outcome or Result; Performance Evaluation; Sales; Motivation and Incentives; System; Applications and Software

May 18, 2012
Article

Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss

By: David I Levine, Michael W. Toffel and Matthew S. Johnson

Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We... View Details

Keywords: Regulation; Occupational Safety; Evaluation; Regression; Matching; Difference In Differences; Safety; Health; Working Conditions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Advantage; Performance; Manufacturing Industry; California

25 Jun 2021
News

Wall Street Returns to Business as Usual While New York Struggles with Reopening

2 Dec 2019
Other Presentation

Increasing Solar Power

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Abby Hopper

Is increasing solar power the answer? Abby Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, and Professor Joe Lassiter discuss how to deliver reliable, clean, low cost power for people everywhere. View Details

Keywords: Solar Power; Renewable Energy; Service Delivery

2019
Book

The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe

By: Steven L. Kaplan and Sophus A. Reinert

The mid-eighteenth century witnessed what might be dubbed an “economic turn” that resolutely changed the trajectory of world history. From the birth of new agricultural practices and the foundation of private societies to the sustained and popular theorization of... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Trade; History; Markets; Society; France; Europe

Find at Harvard

March 1996 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Arborite

Describes the competitive position of Arborite, a Canadian manufacturer of high-pressure laminates (HPL) (a product sold under the Formica name in the United States). Arborite's market share has slipped, and a new general manager must evaluate whether a change in... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Consumer Behavior; Manufacturing Industry; Canada

April 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Economics of Retail Banking Note

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Explains the financial operations of retail banking, highlighting profitability challenges facing the industry. For U.S. banks, it is quite common for more than half of the customer base to be unprofitable and to have relatively few customers make up the vast majority... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Economics; Cost; Banks and Banking; Profit; Revenue; Service Operations; Banking Industry; United States

November 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

By: Jill Avery

Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods, offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3 price point that promised an... View Details

March 2018
Case

Sachem Head's Activism at Autodesk

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

In 2015, activist hedge fund Sachem Head Capital, led by founder Scott Ferguson, launched an activist campaign at computer aided design (CAD) software maker Autodesk. The activist campaign, waged mainly in private, was over Autodesk's lackluster financial performance,... View Details

Keywords: Shareholder Activism; Investing; Activist Investing; Technology; CEO Turnover; Hedge Fund Activism; Benchmarking; Corporate Governance; Information Technology; Investment Activism; Performance Improvement; Management Succession; United States